Poetry Submissions Chart

Are you having trouble keeping track of where you’ve submitted which poems, and what the responses were? That means you’re submitting enough to get confused. Good for you! It also means it’s time for you to start keeping meticulous records of all of your submissions.

Don’t despair! You can use my system. To use the file, simply click on the blue link below this message that says “download.” Then save it to your computer and fill in my silly hokey generic info with your real records.

Here’s what you need to know about how it works. The main thing is to always open this document every single time you send a poem on submission or receive an acceptance/rejection. It only works if you make it a habit and keep it updated. This way you never run the risk of double-booking.

The chart keeps track of each poem individually, which means several poems appear multiple times as well as several markets. I do it this way because it makes it a lot easier to search for something specifically. You can highlight an entire column (either title or venue) and sort it alphabetically to see where, what, or even when you’ve submitted before.

The notes column isn’t really necessary, but I like to keep track of my forms of rejection. Personal rejections mean progress over stock form rejections (and of course acceptances over that). It’s just nice to see which venues are taking time to reply, and which poems are getting what types of responses. It’s a progress meter. I also use this column to keep track of when I expect a reply from them. If they haven’t replied by when they say, I follow up. I color-code those rows so I can see at a glance what needs doing now.

I had to figure it all out on my own and I think a lot of people are struggling to come up with a good system. This one works for me. You can tweak it so that hopefully it will work for you too. Let me know if you have any questions!